OpinionOutpost.com Reviews

Is Opinion Outpost a Scam?

Western Wats powers the OpinionOutpost.com website, which is reportedly an online market research service website. Opinion Outpost appears to provide their business clients with the service of collecting data from their registered member community in the form of completed surveys. Business clients seemingly then use the data to help them formulate better business decisions by critiquing their products or services to better serve consumers. Western Wats, a research data collection agency, has telephone survey centers in the U.S. and the Philippines with online research panels spanning North America and Europe.

What Does OpinionOutpost.com Offer?

OpinionOutpost.com claims to offer their online member community the opportunity to have their opinions count. Surveys are said to be compensated with payment being made in the form of opinion points. Opinion Outpost claims that members have the option to choose which surveys they want to participate in and they can cancel their membership at any time. The opinion points can then be redeemed for cash, sweepstake entries, instant win opportunities or charity donations.

Opinion Outpost also advertises an affiliate referral program that is reportedly free to join. They state they will pay an affiliate $1.00 USD for each new member that creates an online account with them. The affiliate program claims they provide advertising tools, monthly checks and online tracking reports.

According to the website; cash balances are paid in the form of monthly checks. Payment is made when an account surpasses $20.00 in any given month. If the account is under the $20.00 threshold; the money seems to be rolled over into the next month’s earnings; and released when the threshold has been met.

How Much Does OpinionOutpost.com Cost?

OpinionOutpost.com advertises that becoming part of their registered member community is free. However, they do request that members be 18 years of age. Opinion Outpost also limits enrollment to residents living within the United States and Canada and further restrict registration to one member per household. It appears the only cost associated with joining their program is the time you will spend completing surveys; of which they say you will be compensated for.

OpinionOutpost.com in Review

OpinionOutpost.com is an online website that collects data from their online members who complete opinion surveys. In turn; the website claims that they offer compensation for the completed surveys in the form of opinion points that can be redeemed for cash, sweepstake entries, instant win opportunities or charity donations.

The affiliate referral program offered by Opinion Outpost states that they pay their affiliates $1.00 USD for referring new members who register. The website states their payment policy is to mail checks to members when their account balance reaches the minimum $20.00 threshold in any given month.

Western Wats, a data collection company, seems to power the website and has locations in the U.S. and the Philippines; along with research panels spanning North America and Europe. According to the website, the offer to participate is only valid to residents within the U.S. and Canada, those over the age of 18 and only one account per household is allowed.

What is your experience with OpinionOutpost.com? Post your own review of Opinion Outpost below and let us know how it went!

If you are reading this, you may be like me and thousands of other individuals who pursue survey-based services online where our opinion provides an invaluable resource to product manufacturers, businesses, service providers, etc. and where our time is rewarded with compensation. I, myself, have been a member of many different paid survey services for a few years now and have had both excellent and very unfavorable experiences.
I was shocked and appalled to find out that Opinion Outpost was rated the #1 paid survey service available, yet through my experience this is by far the worst service of which I have ever been a member. I know I am not alone in saying that Opinion Outpost is notorious for taking advantage of their "cherished and valued" members, providing horrific customer service and ultimately giving survey-based services overall a marred reputation.
I was a member of Opinion Outpost for many years only to have my account flagged on several occasions for no apparent cause and/or reason. When your account is flagged you receive no survey opportunities until this flag is removed. I had to contact customer service numerous times about this issue because they never notified me that my account status had ever changed. No explanation was ever given regarding this matter and in the end my evaluation of their customer relations is that they provide inadequate, unprofessional, prejudiced and demeaning customer service with an overall lack of concern.
If this is not enough to make anyone avoid this detestable service and seek out superior avenues, here is a list of more irritably-frustrating experiences which ultimately led me to throw in the towel:
- They require you to sacrifice many hours of your time to provide an enormous amount of personal/sensitive information for which they give you ZERO compensation.
- Time and time again I have answered up to 50 questions for a single survey, providing so much useful data, only to find out that I did not qualify and thus received no compensation for my time and information provided.
- They allow their partners to covertly steal your information without compensation and/or notification... let alone permission. When you confront Opinion Outpost about such matters they respond by asking if you would like them to close your account as this is common practice.
- I can honestly say that I only qualified for 10% of the surveys they ever sent me. This equates to many hours of wasted time, confusion, frustration and utter annoyance.
Through a lot of time and wasted energy I know now that I am better off not maintaining my membership with Opinion Outpost. I hope that this review will save at least one person their precious time, effort and frustration through which myself and many other members have direly suffered.
On a side note: I have personally known other members of Opinion Outpost who have had nothing but problems similar to my own. Only a minute number of individuals have ever been satisfied by their service. I would not be surprised to find out that many of the positive reviews one can find regarding Opinion Outpost were written by employees or affiliates.
Some claim they provide the highest rate of compensation for a free service (?). But at what price?

by Steve

October 16, 2010 at 5:45 AM

VA:F [1.9.20_1166]

(1 out of 1 people found this review helpful)

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Definitely not a scam. I got a check in mail from the once already and currently have a 70 dollar balance, waiting to be cashed. My favorite survey panel.